


Knit One, Purl Too

by MsDay



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Claudia Stilinski Feels, Crafty boys, Gen, Knitting, Post-Nogitsune
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-25 17:04:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21359662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsDay/pseuds/MsDay
Summary: Stiles used to knit with his Mum. After the nogitsune, he needs a distraction.
Relationships: Derek Hale & Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 10
Kudos: 77





	Knit One, Purl Too

**Author's Note:**

> The timeline is all over the place. Everyone in the pack but Allison is alive and in BH.

Claudia Stilinski was a witch. Well, not really, but it had seemed that way to Stiles. His Mum could take a ball of yarn, poke it with a few sticks and turn it into whatever she wanted. A sweater, a pair of socks or mittens, a hat with the bat symbol on it. Anything.

Stiles, single-minded in anything that caught his interest, decided that he was going to make things out of yarn, too. He was going to make blankets and sweaters and pants and socks and everything he could think of and it was all going to be superhero stuff.

He had told his mother, when he was just 4, that he’d wanted to make a cape. She had been thrilled. He had been thrilled when she’d agreed to teach him. His Dad had been confused, but after Stiles had explained it to him, he had made Stiles promise to make a cape for him, too.

So Stiles had knit and knit and knit and knit some more, while his Mum had knit and knit and knit and knit some more, too.

It had helped with his concentration. It had also made an effective bribe, ‘if you clean your room by the time I finish making lunch, we’ll go to the yarn store, when we’re done eating and you can spend 20$’.

But everything changed when the frontotemporal dementia attacked. As his Mum got sicker and sicker, she became less and less like herself. She became less interested in doing things that made her happy and more interested in who was trying to kill her. As time went on, Stiles became less interested in things that made him happy and became more interested in wondering what he had done to make his Mum hate him so much. He became preoccupied with trying to be a good boy so his Mum wouldn’t be so angry and she could get better and finally come home.

But she hadn’t come home. And Stiles could no longer look at his knitting needles. They’d gone into a box. So had his yarn and his craft scissors and his tape measure and yarn needles and stitch markers and row counters... And everything he’d made. And everything She’d made.

* * *

He had thought about her when he’d gone for the brain scan. He’d remembered the feelings of fear and hopelessness and helplessness. He’d remembered watching her getting rolled down the hallway in her wheelchair so she could get her own brain scanned, the same thing that was happening to him. He’d remembered sitting in her room, working on... whatever it had been, and waiting for her to come back. It had helped. A little.

When the nogitsune had finally been exorcised and he was himself again, he had still had the memories. He’d had to watch himself killing countless people, countless because any loss of life is a catastrophe, so how do you count even one?

He’d had the nightmare of killing Scott, and the reality of killing Allison. But when he would open his eyes, they were still gone. Not Scott, but the rest of them. He’d still felt that weight. He’d still had to look at Mr. Argent and remember the feeling of his daughter’s blood dripping off of his fingers. Could still feel it.

He’d needed something. Something that would keep his mind just busy enough that the faces of the dead would stay away, but not so busy that he couldn’t live what was left of his pathetic life.

So, he’d opened the box. He’d spent the day crying over the sweaters and socks and hats that he could never use again. He’d cried because she would never make another sweater, another pair of socks, another batman hat with pointy ears. Because she was dead and he’d wondered if he shouldn’t be, too.

* * *

The thing about the internet is, you can find literally anything on it. Including tutorials for the Turkish cast on. So Stiles had made socks. A lot of socks.

He’d made a sweater, but didn’t like the process as much as socks. So he’d made more socks. All the socks. Socks for warm weather, socks for cool weather, socks for sleeping that were so thick and fluffy that they would never fit into a pair of shoes.

* * *

Stiles goes to class, pretending nothing is wrong, and can’t sit still. He fidgets with his pen, he bites his nails, he squeaks his shoes on the floor, he drops his eraser on the desk to see how high it will bounce. He accidentally gets himself detention when he annoys Finstock into threatening him with suicides and he asks if he can start now.

Finstock took that to mean, ‘I’m so bored by your lesson that I’d rather be doing the worst thing you can think of’, even though Stiles meant, ‘I feel like I’m about to crawl out of my skin, also I haven’t slept in three days, will you give me something to do to exhaust my mind and body?’

“You’re late, Stilinski,” coach doesn't look up from whatever he's writing at his desk.

Stiles makes his way over to the first row of seats, “you said suicides, I went to the field,” he plops himself down and starts pulling out his homework.

Finstock looks him over, taking in his gym clothes. He opens his bottom drawer and pulls out a mesh bag with a set of small orange pylons, “five markers, ten laps,” he holds the bag out to Stiles.

He shoves his books back into his bags and grabs the pylon pouch, “thanks coach,” he calls as he runs out of the room.

Finstock comes to find him nearly an hour later, he’s panting and wheezing, lying on the ground. He has two more laps to run.

“You’re done, Stilinski. Go home.”

Stiles shakes his head and he can feel the dirt and grass grinding into his hair. “Two more,” pant, “left,” pant.

Coach shakes his head, “I wanna go home, but I can’t until you do. Leave.”

Stiles frowns at him but nods. He stays there for a few minutes after Finstock walks away.

He gets home, passes out on the couch and doesn’t wake up until his Dad gets home from work at nearly 5, the next morning.

* * *

It becomes routine, wake up around two, knit during breakfast/homework, go to school at eight, drive out to the old McDonalds that shut down over a decade ago to knit during lunch, go back to school, run suicides at three, get sent home by Finstock at four, pass out, wake up around two, knit during breakfast/homework, go to school at eight...

Stiles might be upset that no one seems to miss him, but then he remembers the feeling of Allison’s blood and he can’t really blame them. Besides, they all still talk to him in class, they just don’t go out of their way to include him. Of course, neither does he.

* * *

He’s in the middle of a particularly complicated bit of lacework when a sudden noise comes from outside his window. He knows it’s either Scott or Derek, and doesn’t think much of it when he calls a quiet, “come in.” When the window slides open and nothing else happens, he realizes whats wrong. He’s knitting. He didn’t want anyone to find out. Scott already knows, but he still teases Stiles for it when he does it in front of him.

Derek is smirking at him when he looks up. A single eyebrow raised. Stiles knows that look, that’s the Jackson-is-better-than-you-and-this-is-why look. He can’t be mocked, not for this, not when this is the only thing keeping him sane. “My Mother taught me. We used to knit together, when I was young. I haven’t really done it since she died.” It all comes out in a rush and even Stiles can hear the desperate ‘please, please, please’ underlining every word.

Derek’s smirk drops, so does his eyebrow. “My Mom used to quilt. She didn’t teach me how.” It’s a peace offering. Not much of one, but it’s monumental coming from Derek. Stiles nods, relieved that this isn’t going to become a thing. “I found something in the preserve, teeth marks that I don’t recognize,” he pulls out his phone, taps a few times and Stiles’ own phone chimes.

Derek has sent him some pictures. Gross, gory, close-ups of half eaten animals. “Wow, this is disgusting, thanks. Should we be worried?” he opens up his email on his computer and downloads the photos there, so he can see them better.

“You tell me.”

Stiles rolls his eyes and waves his hand, “I’ll let you know what I find.”

Derek doesn’t say anything when he leaves.

* * *

It turns out to be nothing. Stiles initial thought is rabbits, but after a quick trip to Deaton’s a few days later, he’s confirmed that it’s rats. Probably a family. Deaton says that having werewolves in the area who regularly patrol, scares away larger animals, there’s nothing to keep the rat population in check, so they’re getting bolder, going after larger prey and leaving half the carcass when they take it back to the colony in pieces.

Stiles stops off at the loft to tell Derek the horrible, disgusting, plague-flea carrying news. He’s called in and finds Derek sitting on the floor, the coffee table in front of him is covered in scraps of fabric, spools of thread and sundry things Stiles recognizes as ‘for sewing’ but can’t identify more specifically than that.

Derek looks over at him, guilt written all over his face, for some reason. “I can’t figure out how to make it straight,” he gestures to the screen of his open laptop, where there’s a video paused on a close up of a line of stitching.

He comes over and plops himself down beside Derek. “Show me what you’re doing.” Derek’s ears turn pink, but he goes to it. Stiles nods along as he watches. “Here,” he picks up a few scraps and an already threaded needle. “This is a whip stitch,” he points to the screen, “it’ll work better if you hold it like this.”

Stiles spends the afternoon teaching Derek the few sewing stitches and techniques used in knitting. Once Derek has a live teacher who can answer his questions in real time, he starts to understand how it all works.

When Derek has a line of stitching that he deems ‘good enough’, Stiles tells him about the rats, suggests he get a dog or two to take on patrol and leaves him to it.

* * *

Two weeks later, Stiles comes home from school, sweaty and gross from his suicides. He’s gotten a lot better since he started. He no longer collapses halfway to his goal and he’s even added a few more laps to his routine. The downside is that he no longer passes out as soon as his head hits the pillow, but the nightmares don’t really wake him up anymore. He still has them, and they’re still horrible, but at least he can sleep through the night, now.

He grabs a sandwich, has a shower and goes to his room to sleep. He can’t, though. Because there’s something on his bed. He frowns at it, but it doesn’t move, so he picks it up.

It’s a tiny quilt. The stitches are uneven and the whole thing slopes a little to the right, but it’s a proper quilt. He turns it over and sees the wooden dowel running through a fabric tube along the top. He smiles as he flips it back over. There’s a big dark blue star, maybe a flower, in the centre, with spiky bits radiating outward in different shades of blue and green. It looks like something an old lady would make for her grandson. Stiles loves it. It goes on his wall, right over his bed.

* * *

Derek has had enough of his pack for today. They were supposed to be training, working on controlling the shift. Extend one claw, retract it, extend the next claw, retract it. Then Jackson started talking shit about Isaac’s Dad and Isaac responded in kind and Derek walked away while the whole pack was trying to kill each other.

If he’d known being Alpha was going to be this difficult, he would’ve let Scott kill Peter.

He freezes when he gets his door open, Stiles was here. He’s gone now, but he left his scent behind. He shrugs off his jacket and lays on the couch so he can wallow in self pity. He knows he does it, and he’s not going to stop, shut up, Stiles.

There’s a bag on his table. It smells like Stiles, so it’s probably not poison. It could be an exploding ink pack, though.

He’s confused, when he opens the bag. Why would Stiles give him socks? Then it hits him. Stiles didn’t _give _him socks, Stiles _made_ him socks. They’re plain black. From far away they look like something you could buy at Walmart, a 12 pack for 6 bucks, but up close, they look like something that could go for 25$ a pair. They're so soft and there's a sort of criss-crossy pattern over the top of the foot.

Does this mean Stiles liked the wall hanging? Did he give Derek sock out of some sense of obligation, a form of payment? His face falls, he didn’t even realize he’d been smiling. That wasn’t what Derek meant when he’d given Stiles the wall hanging. His stomach clenches and he shoves the socks back into the bag. There’s a piece of paper that he hadn’t noticed before. He pulls it out and unfolds it. It’s a print out of a picture of the wall hanging, hanging on Stiles wall, right above his bed. He’s aware of the smile this time. You don’t hang something on your wall if you don’t like it.

The socks fit perfectly. Derek smiles again.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're knittingly inclined, the Turkish cast on is genius and amazing and the only way to start a pair of socks. If you, like me, suffer from second sock syndrome, you can cure it with a turkish toe, magic loop and two-at-a-time construction.


End file.
